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PokerStars DoN Scandal: Million Dollar Compensation Revealed

In response to the illegal activities claimed to have been happening in PokerStars’ “Double or Nothing” (DoN) sit and gos, a member of PokerStars Game Security team clarified the issue regarding the posts made by a payer at the Two Plus Two poker forum under the name “Jane0123”. The posts, which detailed the cheating using the “whipsaw” technique, was responded to by “Jackson” answering six questions about the matter, but evaded answering as to when it all started, but acknowledges that they only started investigating after the initial report was made in January and concluding their findings in February. “Jackson” says that during the period of investigation, the accounts involved have been closed.

As the forums claimed that the scam only occurred in the DoN sit and gos, PokerStars confirms that other stakes have been affected, apart from the high level stakes reported, such as the $50 and $100 levels. Other stakes involved are as low as the $10 and $20 bets.

PokerStars have closed 38 accounts involved in the scam, and have only been concerned with the Chinese collusion ring, compensating affected players and figuring out how much money was involved. The number reported by PokerStars slightly conflict the numbers stated in the forum thread by 8, and the company has did not provide further information regarding the account holders involved.

In the report made by their spokesman “Jackson”, the scammers were able to profit as much as $494,000. In the end, PokerStars paid $2,100,000 to compensate their affected players. These numbers reported by PokerStars are not exact, but are close to the numbers reported in the forums. With this security issue, the most crucial is to resolve and something which PokerStars addressed. Their response was to fortify their game security in order to prevent such scams from happening again, and further encourages their patrons to give feedback regarding the matter.

In order to resolve some of the security issues, PokerStars have limited the countries allowed to play in the same Double or Nothing games. Jackson says that “This restriction will ensure that only one player from each of several countries (those countries involved in this restriction were not given) will be able to play in these events.” Another step taken by PokerStars is to now closely monitor each game to ensure that players are secure when playing their games. Furthermore, PokerStars has completed investigation on the accounts involved and compensating their players.